Bush Plan Would Ease Alaska Wetlands Protection

WASHINGTON —  The Bush Administration, with an uneasy eye on Alaska’s presidential polls, Friday proposed to ease wetlands protection in the state--a move environmentalists said will jeopardize millions of acres.

Sources familiar with a long debate within the Administration said Environmental Protection Agency chief William K. Reilly, who had opposed such a step, signed the formal proposal under direct orders from the White House.

The plan would exempt Alaska from a key regulation controlling the filling of wetlands, which provide wildlife habitat, help control erosion and recharge ground water supplies. The proposal will now be subject to public comment and possible revision before becoming a part of federal regulations.

Under Friday’s proposal, if a property owner shows that development of a wetlands area is unavoidable, the owner is free to fill in the area. Under the existing regulation, if wetlands development is unavoidable, the owner must try to ease its impact.

The move has been advocated by the real estate and oil-drilling industries, as well as the Alaska congressional delegation, but adamantly opposed by environmentalists who charged that it would not only lead to the destruction of priceless wildlife habitat but threaten the state’s fishing industry.

The contiguous 48 states have lost more than half their original wetlands, but Alaska has lost less than 1%. Because of this vast remaining acreage, it has been argued that the preservation of wetlands should be managed differently in Alaska than in other states.

While Alaska counts for only three electoral votes, a Republican victory there is regarded as crucial to President Bush’s reelection. With Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton comfortably ahead in big states such as California, Illinois and New York, Bush strategists are counting on a patchwork of small states to make up the difference.

Alaska traditionally goes Republican in presidential elections, but Bush campaign officials have become increasingly uneasy about what may happen there. Senior campaign adviser Charles Black said most polls show Bush, Clinton and independent candidate Ross Perot no more than 7 percentage points apart.

Considering recent history, it is not out of the question for Perot to capture the state, Black said. Gov. Walter J. Hickel, an advocate of development, won election as an independent after entering the race only a few weeks before Election Day.

Although it had been known that White House officials favored exempting Alaska from the regulation, the EPA announcement produced a furious reaction from environmental organizations.

National Wildlife Federation President Jay D. Hair called the decision “an obvious accommodation to the oil industry” and said it would “spark unbridled oil and urban development. No wetland ecosystem will be safe.”

Saying Alaska would be left with less wetlands protection than any other state, Bob Adler, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, warned that developers and oil companies “could fill in or pave over wetlands without showing, as they must in every other state, that it is impossible to avoid harm to wetlands.”

Times staff writer Douglas Jehl contributed to this story.